It took the United States 16 years to recognise the Soviet Union, 20 for Vietnam, and 30 for the People’s Republic of China. Yet 54 years after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, Washington still does not have diplomatic relations with Cuba. Some observers are convinced that this may change, based on a single handshake between US president Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raúl Castro at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in December 2013. The media called it a historic moment, and were obsessed with whether it had been planned. It is impossible to be sure, but factors suggest it may have been stage-managed.

A week after the funeral, the conservative US journalist John McLaughlin invited a group of pundits to discuss the issue on his television programme. They all denounced the sanctions, even Pat Buchanan, a former presidential candidate from the ultra-conservative Reform Party. Like McLaughlin, Buchanan had been a supporter of Ronald Reagan, who had no interest in reconciliation with Castro’s regime.

In February 2013 an editorial in the Financial Times had argued that “the intellectual case for relaxing and eventually removing the embargo is certainly strong. Mr Obama should now advance it”. The same month, Patrick Leahy, a senior Democratic senator, led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Havana. A year later, he wrote an open letter to Obama, co-signed by the Republican senator for Arizona, Jeff Flake. They asked for the lifting of the embargo and the normalisation of relations — something 56% of the US public wants, according to a 2012 poll by the Atlantic Council. Mentioning trade and investment by the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, they wrote: “Rather than isolate Cuba with outdated policies, we have isolated ourselves”.

On 16 May this year, the US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, Roberta Jacobson, met in Washington with Josefina Vidal, the US division director of Cuba’s foreign ministry. They (...)